A provocative history that reveals how sex workers have been at the vanguard of social justice movements for the past fifty years while building a movement of their own that challenges our ideas about labor, sexuality, feminism, and freedom
Fifty countries treat sex work as a legitimate job, and it has been legalized (with restrictions) in eleven others. The United States is one of the few industrialized nations that continues to criminalize prostitution and, as Melinda Chateauvert reveals, these laws have put sex workers at risk. Documenting five decades of sex-worker activism, Sex Workers Unite puts prostitutes, hustlers, call girls, strippers, and porn stars in the center of civil rights struggles. Although their presence has largely been ignored, sex workers have here been recast as key activists in struggles for gay liberation, women’s rights, reproductive justice, union organizing, and prison abolition. By foregrounding labor, Chateauvert reframes sex work as work and argues that sex-worker rights are ultimately human rights.
**
Review
“Sex Workers Unite does the invaluable work of showing us what a responsible and effective movement might look like, centering the voices and strategies of sex workers themselves in order to restore our best future to the realm of the possible.”
—Feministing
“[Chateauvert's] portraits of individual activists and advocacy groups are well drawn, proving that humanization through story, not philosophical debates about personhood and privacy, will win this campaign… Chateauvert makes a strong case that 'engaging in sexual commerce should not be grounds for disenfranchisement.'”
—Publishers Weekly
“The breadth of the material impressively commemorates the movement’s decades long struggle.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"Sex Workers Unite is path-breaking in its claims about the expansive legacy of sex worker activism, and one hopes it will serve as a starting point for an even more expansive analysis."
—San Francisco Chronicle
“[T]he book makes important contributions to histories of feminism, lgbtq politics, and social movements and clears a path for further studies of these important topics.”
—The Journal of American History
“The sheer depth and breadth of study evident in the book ensures its usefulness as a resource. But Sex Workers Unite is much more than a collection of facts and figures, however comprehensive. Chateauvert displays a deft hand with subtle ideas.”
—Tits and Sass
“Readers will learn a great deal about contemporary sex workers rights organizing in the United States (and a little bit about Canada) by exploring this book.”
—A Kiss for Gabriela
“Chateauvert’s writing is blunt, honest and overwhelmingly liberal. Her dry but positive discussion of sex work and its employees aims to educate the reader. Her mission is to prove that those in the sex work industry are not deviants, addicts or victims. They are people making conscious choices who deserve equal civil rights and legal representation. She wants their stories told, their histories documented, and their allies counted.”
—Edge
"This is an important book—not only for understanding the history of the movement but also for debunking myths about sex workers."
—Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former US surgeon general
“From the movement's beginning with street-walking cop-fighting trans women at Stonewall at Compton's Cafeteria through feminist betrayal and the AIDs crisis all the way to today's sex work activists and artists who make this labor visible, Sex Workers Unite is a fact-driven, street-smart history. This book is crucial.”
—Michelle Tea, author of Valencia
“In this definitive history, Chateauvert recounts the many challenges and successes of the sex workers’ rights movement, and shows us how much farther we have to go to guarantee everyone’s fundamental rights to sexual privacy and self-determination.”
—Anthony D. Romero, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union
“With a historian’s eye for the illuminating detail and the street fighter’s passion for her cause, Melinda Chateauvert offers a sassy journey through the worlds of 'Working Girls and Boys,' black, brown, and white, trans, gay, and straight. Against rescuers and abolitionists, Sex Workers Unite recovers the collective action and labor organizing of sex workers for better conditions, living wages, cultural freedom, and social justice.”
—Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Feminist Studies, University of California Santa Barbara and co-editor of Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care
About the Author
Melinda Chateauvert is an activist who has been involved in many grassroots campaigns to change policies and attitudes about sex and sexuality, gender and antiviolence, and race and rights. As a university professor she has taught courses on social justice organizing, the civil rights movement, and gender and sexuality. She is a fellow at the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.